Avis Williams marked her first year as superintendent of New Orleans schools Tuesday with an address celebrating the district’s progress, mainly on mental health, and discussed ongoing issues like attendance and equity.
She also promised to provide more support for teachers by holding monthly gatherings.
“This year is the year of the teacher,” Williams said. “It’s going to be a space and a time for us to really let our teachers know that they are valued.”
Williams is a teacher at heart. She started her career in the classroom more than 20 years ago and has focused on curriculum and instruction as an administrator, including her last role as superintendent of schools in Selma, Alabama.
“One of the things that I love about being a teacher is the sense of belonging and community,” Williams said in an interview Tuesday. “In our school district, we know it’s a little harder for teachers to always feel that way.”
Low morale and high turnover are long-standing issues among New Orleans teachers that predate the pandemic and recent political fights directed at public schools.
The state fired the city’s school employees en masse after Hurricane Katrina, and most never returned. Now as an all-charter system, the district doesn’t employ teachers directly.
Teachers at a few schools are unionized, and only two have collective bargaining agreements. That means the vast majority don’t have any union protections.
Williams’ plan to hold monthly gatherings for teachers — which she’s calling the Joyful Educator Collaborative — is a way for her to share her expertise and interact with them more directly, according to Dave Cash, a teacher at the Rooted School and president of United Teachers of New Orleans, a labor union representing teachers and other education workers.
“She knows a lot about how to improve the quality of education that happens in classrooms, and her hands are completely tied,” Cash said.
As superintendent of an all-charter district, Williams has no say in the curriculum or day-to-day operations of the city’s more than 70 public schools. What she can do is have an impact by offering teachers professional development.
Williams said investing in teachers is one of the best things a district can do to improve students’ academic outcomes.
She said she also sees the meetings as a way for educators to learn from one another, adding that teachers will help set the agendas.
“I don’t want this to be something that teachers feel like is being done to them,” she said. “This is being done for them and with them in an effort to make sure that they have what they need to feel valued, supported, and have a sense of belonging.”
United Teachers of New Orleans is one of several organizations working with the district on the collaborative. Cash said it's the first time they've partnered with the union in recent years.
“We have a superintendent that’s willing to meet with us,” he said. “That’s been big.”
Biggest accomplishments
Williams highlighted a number of first-year successes in her address, including holding the district’s first Hispanic town hall, with translation services for non-Spanish speakers rather than the other way around, and adding early childhood seats to the district’s enrollment process.
Her main focus was improving student mental health, which took a steep hit during the pandemic and has been slow to recover. Children in New Orleans face the added strain of high crime rates and gun violence.
The district announced a $10 million partnership with Children’s Hospital last month that will expand access to mental health care in schools.
Williams said Tuesday that she plans to open a new hub at the Mahalia Jackson Center so families can access more resources, including adult education, health care and housing.
Dana Peterson, CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, an organization that supports the city’s charter schools, said Williams has done a good job bringing the community together to support children and families by funneling more resources through schools.
“People point fingers at the schools and say, ‘Why can’t you guys solve these problems? And I think we’re saying, this takes a village, quite literally,” he said.
Room for improvement
There are a number of areas where the district needs to improve and will focus its efforts, Williams said — the big one being chronic absenteeism and truancy.
Attendance rates tanked during the pandemic and have proven difficult to restore, not just in New Orleans, but across the state and country.
Williams said Tuesday that the district needs more and better data to determine the root causes of the issue and work to remove them.
Another issue Williams has promised to take on in her second year is the equity of admission requirements at a number of schools.
“When you’ve got schools where the majority of students are not Black and Brown, it’s concerning when nearly 90% of our student population is Black and Brown,” she said in an interview Tuesday.
Williams said solutions could include making sure all students have the opportunities they need to be eligible for selective high schools, like test preparation and access to high-level classes.
But arguably, the biggest issue she faces as superintendent is the district’s declining enrollment.
As the city’s population has shrunk, so has the number of school-age children, leaving its public schools with too many seats and not enough students.
Several of the city’s charter operators willingly consolidated schools this past year due to under-enrollment. Williams said school leaders know more closures are necessary and that tough decisions have to be made.
She said she expects the district’s school board to pass a new accountability framework for charters in the fall, which would allow her to further improve the quality of the city’s schools.
